


Dragons in the West

by Cowboy_Syd



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, But not until the end, Canon Typical Violence, F/M, First Person Narration, Gay dads, Hurt/Comfort, Journal, Language, M/M, Major Spoilers, Multi, Period Typical Bigotry, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Canon, Sad Cowboys, Slurs, You guys know that all cowboys were gay POC right?, Young Dutch van der Linde, Young Hosea Matthews, a lot of gay nature references, alcohol use, arthur and john are brothers, canon typical manipulation, rating may change for violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:22:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28828104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cowboy_Syd/pseuds/Cowboy_Syd
Summary: “We're born with some dreams. We acquire others as we get older and we live out something else. When I was...a kid back east they said there were dragons in the west. Dragons! Well, I guess we found them. Found them or made them or...became them. Oh, these futile lives of petty sin we have lived! What choice did we have, really?”Hosea’s journals from 1869 until the day of his death.
Relationships: Annabelle/Dutch van der Linde, Bessie Matthews/Hosea Matthews, Hosea Matthews/Dutch van der Linde, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Kudos: 13





	Dragons in the West

**Author's Note:**

> Hosea is a young emotional kid in this one.  
> TW for alcohol use, one euphemism for suicide and very mild mentions of violence and sexual content

_ January 20 1870 _

I suppose I’ve made quite a fool of myself. I’ve never been the brightest fellow, I’ll be the first to admit it, but today I feel absolutely as if I am the dullest person God ever put on this good green Earth. Perhaps my career in performance was never misjudged. I’ve seen them freakshows, people put good money down on a ticket to watch a pinhead make a fool of himself on stage for a bunch of folk. But I ain’t even that kind of a fool, no apeish features or big hulking frame. Break a chair over my head and I’ll probably scream like a bitch, and that ain’t too fun to watch. 

There are some things a man’s soul can’t recover from, and I feel that this is one of them. I feel like a fool. A complete fool. I hesitate to even put it to paper because it’s almost too embarrassing to think about that long, but I suppose the only way that I will ever free myself of it is to get it out of my head and onto paper. I’ve always felt that way.

I met this man in a small little livestock town not too far out of Peoria. It had been raining for what felt like a month, and I was more than ready to palm a few bucks and a quarter from one of them old and beaten down ranchers and get myself some whiskey and a warm bed to sleep in, after wandering the hills for so long drenched in rain and reeking with the smell of mud and sweat. I even got myself a bath and a new shirt while I was there, and I supposed that made me feel somewhat self-assured, like I was a goddamn teenager again mooning over that Cartwell girl, dressing up all nice to go to town so that if she saw me she’d be sweet on me. And anyway, a couple of shots of whiskey and that stupid warm feeling in my stomach and I got to talking to some gentleman, said he were a businessman of some kind, think maybe he sold some kind of revolutionary hair gel, said it was going to change the market. Maybe it was lotion. I can’t quite remember. He was a very striking man, more beautiful than any of the women in that bar, that's for sure. He had this dark curtain of hair, thick and curled at the ends, and these big dark eyelashes. If it weren’t for his muscled shoulders and the hair on his chin then maybe I’d even mistake him for a woman with those eyes. Damn pretty. I ain’t sure if it was the whiskey or if I was so damn lonely after being on my own for so many months, just me and Junebug out in the wide open expanse of the country, but I was acting like a right fool. Standing around and blushing like some virgin bride, leaning in a bit too close in the cramped dark bar.

I have to wonder if he picked up on me being an invert from the second I walked into that bar. Is it really so plainly written on my face? Or perhaps it was the way I held my glass, or how my gaze caught on his shoulders for a bit too long, my fingers lingering on his wrist when I greeted him at the barstool. And he was giving it back as much as he took it, offering to light my cigar for me, cupping a warm rough hand to my face. I swear I haven’t blushed so much since I was a boy. Here I am, the better part of my twenties flushed down the drain and I’m standing there like a fourteen year old whispering my room number to some nobody hair gel salesman in the hopes that I wouldn’t be sleeping alone that night. And I didn’t. 

It felt like I waited for hours in that room, I kept expecting to see the damn sun come up in the small curtained window in my room, sitting on my bed drinking a bottle of whiskey like it was water. I don’t know how long I waited there until the man came and knocked on my door, and by then it had occurred to me that I didn’t even know his name, yet he seemed to know mine, or at last the last syllable, slurred on his lips “‘Sea” as he latched the door and came to sit by my bed, blowing out the oil lamp out and getting under the covers. 

Now I ain’t going to talk about what I did with him, or  _ to  _ him rather, because it's rather indecent and far too humiliating, and I don’t remember much past opening that door anyways. And besides, the point is that the next morning, my head aching like a stake had been driven in one each and had come out the other, I reached under the nightstand and found only crumbs. I must’ve searched that room on my hands and knees for a good twenty minutes before it dawned on me that the bastard had taken my satchel and the guns off of my belt. I felt like such a town fool, used for a roll in the hay and then robbed blind. I don’t know how I can ever show my face in this country again. Luckily, I had a few good jewels in Junebugs saddlebag that I could pawn off for enough to get a couple good guns, some food and a new journal. 

I miss my sketches, and the picture of my mother, but most of all I miss the letter my pa wrote me, the only piece of him I’ve got. If I see that bastard around town I’ll put a hole in his skull so wide you can see all of the way to the other side. But ultimately I know he ain’t any better than me, robbing folk when they ain’t looking. Regardless, I feel absolutely dreadful. I have debated taking a long ride off of a short cliff, and putting the damn world out of its misery having this awful pitiful bloke roaming around like a remorseful critter, but I suppose I’ll manage to get over it at some point. 

**Author's Note:**

> Someone please tell me how to format tabs on A03 this is so ugly. I just started writing this to get myself back into writing so I don’t know how long it’s going to be or if anyone will read it but if you do and you want to I’d love to hear what you think! I’m trying to research as I go so if I mess up anything canon or if it’s not period appropriate I’m sorry!!


End file.
